(362a) Toll Manufacturing in the Chemical Process Industry

Toll manufacturing is based on a sharing-economy model where a manufacturer owns the manufacturing facility and equipment, and charges a tolling fee to the consumers for providing critical on‐demand processing services. Compared to traditional chemical industries in which a majority of supply chain is managed and operated by a single parent company, toll manufacturing offers a decentralized chemical production route where both manufacturers and consumers form an essential part of the supply chain. From consumers’ perspective, adopting the tolling model has several advantages including high manufacturing efficiency, optimal resource utilization, risk management, lower time-to-market, meeting evolving market demands and testing new feedstocks and products without large investments on acquiring equipment, labor and expertise. Due to distributed nature of tolling model and supply chain inefficiencies, a new set of challenges arise for both consumers and manufacturers. This presentation will cover the prevalent applications of toll manufacturing in chemical industries, key challenges that persist in the sharing‐economy model, and will emphasize the opportunities and key issues of using process systems engineering (PSE) approaches to help toll manufacturing.